Great photography sells products online. It’s as simple as that.
Treating product photography as an afterthought is a recipe for disaster. You have to showcase your products through high-quality photography to make your customers feel comfortable enough to add them to their carts. Keep in mind – you’ve seen your products in real life, but your customers have not.
It’s easy to get bogged down with the busy work of running a business – suppliers, sourcing new products, crafting social media posts – you can easily forget that having great product photos is possibly one of the most direct marketing strategies there is.
Take your cue from traditional newspapers – they have been doing eye track studies for years.They know that large, high-quality photos translated into higher single-copy sales at the newsstand. In social media, Facebook and Twitter are constantly making images larger, and providing tools for editing so photos can look their best.
Your Shopify store’s photography not only has to be amazing but it should also be visually arresting to stand out from the onslaught of photos we’re bombarded with on a daily basis.
Take for example Faire Child Makewear – as a brand new sustainable children’s clothing line they needed to showcase their products in a variety of ways on their website. They mixed lookbook style fashion photography, traditional product photography, and in-situation imagery for a visually stunning website. Their two-day photo shoot produced a library of assets that could be used across their Shopify store, social media posts, and direct marketing channels.
If you can’t afford a professional photographer, you should at least aim to take the best photos you can for your store. Having a decent camera isn’t necessary – most smartphones have high enough quality cameras – it’s the lighting that you’ll need to work on. If you can spend a little money, a lightbox like Foldio might be a great investment, but you’d be surprised what you can produce with a white sheet of bristol board and the light from a big bay window.